After our “Wardrobe Malfunction” a few weeks back at the Olympus Rally in Washington, we (by we I mean I) were keen for a bit of redemption at our home rally this past weekend, Oregon Trail. Other than Carl buying a shed for his backyard two days before the rally and the resulting (typical) late night load-up, we were more ready than ever for this race. Semi-familiar roads and a car that was at its best yet had optimism at an all time high.
We never want to get too ahead of ourselves though, so I was relieved to see that Carl was obviously on his way to having a proper Cold when I picked him up at 6am on Thursday for the two hour drive north to Dufur, Oregon where our Reconnaissance of the Rally Stages would begin. Nothing like feeling crappy at the start of a weekend of bouncing around in various automobiles… We made it though the day and checked out a hundred or so miles of roads to be rallied on the weekend. Some were F A S T! Two-lane Wasco County roads linking farms together in the wheat fields of the Columbia Plateau eventually gave way to a couple stages in the forest above Hood River. A good mix of new and old, fast and ROUGH would keep us honest through the weekend.
Recce finished up early in the afternoon, even with a leisurely lunch at a local BBQ joint in The Dalles, so we headed to our buddy (and fellow Kona Team MTB shredder) Matthew Slaven’s place in Portland for a nap and some relaxing. I can only relax so much in one day though, so while Carl slept it off Slaven and I went to Paddy’s self proclaimed “best backyard pumptrack in Portland!” for a sunset shred. Who knew a 20×50 plot of blue groove dirt could be so much fun? Plus, we heard the grossest story in history, which prompted the telling of #2 grossest later that evening by one Jon Wallrod. Gross.
With Friday’s rally kickoff stages at PIR under the lights we were left with the better part of a day to blow in Portland. A road bike ride in the West Hills was in order and Slaven’s route choice didn’t disappoint. We rode singletrack, obviously, and got the corner linking-groove down on the Germantown Road descent back to the city. Not too long a ride though, as Carl was invited to a Pre X-Games meeting at Rally HQ in the afternoon. They showed us diagrams of the course (huge jump and lots o hairpins at the LA Coliseum), gave some info about how much more power your car is allowed to have on TV (LOTS) and wished everyone luck in the selection. Good thing Carl is such an interesting chap in addition to being bloody talented behind the wheel, hopefully that gets him in…

Man, almost two days in and we haven’t even raced yet, time to get to it! Friday evening’s spectator stages at Portland International Raceway are some of our favorites, mostly because we ride them for a cooldown after racing Cyclocross here every fall and think of clever new lines, which are unrealistic at best… Some of them worked though, the car was running rad and the choice to use a Tarmac tire in lieu of the normal Gravel rally skins paid off with some top 5 stage times (even before people started crashing out). Plus, we didn’t wreck the car doing something stupid that we’d planned out the previous fall…
After racing until nearly 11:00pm and getting into our lodging at Phyllis and Jim Olsen’s place in Dufur at 1:45am, Saturday’s 10am Parc Expose schedule didn’t seem quite as casual as we’d originally thought. Fortunately, we maximized our sleep by doing all necessary service in Parc Expo instead of “before” in the “service area” like everyone else. Suckers. The shiny new (to us, thanks Dave Henderson for knowing the right dumpsters to dive in) Michelin’s were installed and that pesky front Anti-Roll Bar was removed to complement our new All Wheels Driven Rally Suspension (thanks, Byron, for trading us seven even more used Rally Tires for a weekend of jumping your shocks). Plus I bought Carl a real sheetrock knife at the K-Mart to trim the mudflaps. Whew, such productivity…
About 3 minutes into the first running of Catch-um an hour later we were missing all the air in the left rear Michelin. Somehow Carl kept it together for 3 or so miles of the roughest stage we’ve ever rallied (or hope to) and lost only 15 seconds to the competition without destroying the wheel in the process. A quick change (pretty sure we change a rally tire faster than a bike tire) and we were transiting to Fir Mountain Long stage on the Spare Tire that came with the Wheels of Teal when Carl purchased it almost four years ago. It was still brand new. Yup, we’ve never flatted a rally tire. When I asked Carl what he thought we hit, he replied that it “was probably one of the seven million gnarly embedded rocks hit in 5th gear on that stage.” Thank you, Captain Obvious…
Fir Mt. was smooth, I was saying the right things and Carl was interpreting them beautifully, then we came across one Subaru Rally Team USA member Dave Mirra in an obviously rolled car parked across the road. A bit of ditch driving and taking it down a notch out of respect for imminent danger brought us to the end of Fir 12:25 or so later and quite alive.

A quick change of all four tires to our slightly used Lassa’s (having two sets of wheels and tires is handy…) from Olympus Day 2 and we were back at Catch’um II, trying to get pumped up to charge some ROUGH again. Fortunately, when we came flying over a crest at about 100 to find Ken Block jumping up and down in the road waving an SOS sign the prospect of destroying our car came to a screeching halt. He informed us that he’d found some oncoming traffic in a Red Pickup Truck and had shut down the stage. We would transit to the finish, marveling at just how rough a mountain road can get with decades of neglect. We also marveled the luck of both Block and Local Red Truck Guy at having found each other on a straightaway rather than on one of the dozens of “Right 5 over crest long, rough” that made up most of the stage and surely would’ve resulted in the death of both parties… Scary. Normally the stages are ultra secure at Rally races, as they have to be in order to avoid horrible meetings, but every once in a while a local will blunder on-stage, thinking they’re just cutting some old surveyor’s tape… Scary.
Fir Mountain Long #II was next. Much to our surprise, we came around the same Left 5 to find Ken Block’s Monster Ford on it’s doors opposite where Mirra’s car landed an hour earlier. Carl was clearly (smartly) spooked and we took it easy to the end of the stage, again finishing quite alive… From there we headed east toward Dufur to do some rallying in the wheatfields. Big up and downhills and huge long straightaways dominated the stages for the afternoon. We were kind of rolling along, lulled from the carnage of the morning and just wanting to make it to the end of the day. Which might have been why we didn’t really notice the slippery slope of the car losing power throughout the afternoon until it was too late to fix before day’s end. A casual evening service unearthed some exhaust problems that might’ve been the culprit, but on the drive home it was obvious that we still were driving something closer to the Original Wheels of Teal… Fortunately a morning Mass Airflow Sensor swap from my WRX (official parts car) revealed that even a very slightly dusty sensor could retard a car’s performance to almost nothing… We were BACK!

Sunday’s stages are what Rally Dreams are made of. Fast roads in a fast car with perfect driver/co-driver communication. We were back on the Michelins after a generous loan of a matching spare from 2009 Super Production series winner Jimmy Keeny (who was 41 seconds ahead of us in 6th overall. Really generous. Thanks, Jimmy) and planning on pushing hard to catch him… Push hard we did, setting top 5 stage times for most of the day with high fives all around. On a re-running of one of Saturday afternoon’s (powerless) stages we shaved almost a minute off our previous time. Rad. Typically our afternoon passes of stages we’d run in the morning improved by 5% or so, on par with Race Winner (and all around nice guy) Andrew Comre-Picard’s first passes. More high fives! We took three seconds per mile out of Keeney and moved solidly into 6th overall for the weekend, finally breaking the 7th place streak… It was good to see ACP win one, even more so after he claimed it at Friday Night’s Driver’s Meeting…
Rally Chair Matt Tabor- “Everyone have fun out there tonight, but remember, we’re here to put on a show, you can’t win the rally tonight but you can certainly lose it.”
Andrew Comre-Picard- “What? I’m going to win it TONIGHT!” And he did…
Now we’re back in Bend recovering from the weekend, I’ve got Carl’s cold and he’s putting the finishing touches on his shed. The opportunity to put the car in an Eagle Van Lines truck after the finish was passed up in hopes that we’ll be able to secure an X- Games start spot without making the long, expensive and potentially car-breaking trip to the Susquehannock Trail Performance Rally in Pennsylvania on June 4-5. But we will if we have to, and kind of want to, now that we’re getting better at this Rallying business…
Speaking of business, we’re going to a “Mountain Bike Race” next weekend. Pro XCT #3 at Lance Armstrong’s ranch in Austin, Texas will be the beginning of my amazing comeback and an opportunity to test out the new Rabobank/Giant Kit…http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8K4_WC6kTA This is a downhill on SS9, Starveout, before the 2 minute dust start windows went into effect. Dust is scary…http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUxo-g07mmE SS10, Boyd, which was even scarier in the dust, except this part. This part was sweet! Especially at 1:25 when we go by…